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In 50 years of serving the hungry soul, some days it’s pizza, some days a slice of life.
Kalil Dahdouh is in the office above the Colonnade Pizza Restaurant, which he solely took over on Nov. 4, 1967, or very nearly 50 years ago, and a place that may make the best pizza in town — a household brand, really — consuming $30,000 a month in cheese alone.
At age 83 — in remarkably good shape — he’s reminiscing about arriving in Ottawa in January 1959, a young man from Lebanon, to be greeted with waist-high snowbanks outside Union Station.
“I called my father and told him I wanted to come home.” A city is grateful he stayed.
He went on to a remarkable business career, helping grow the city’s Lebanese community, providing a jumping-off point for the likes of Moe Atallah (Newport fame) and regularly feeding a posse of MPs, like Stephen Harper, then merely a nerdy member from Calgary.
“He loved this place,” says Dahdouh. “Half the time he never used a fork and knife. He’d read a book a night. Every night we’d look, different book. He would read and read and read.”
(He says he once heard a plea from a Conservative MP to put a word in with Harper: “You talk to him more than we do.”)
But it is not all fame and roses. He and his wife Mona had four children, including Peter — now a mainstay in the business — and Jacklene, who tragically died of brain cancer on Feb. 28 at the age of 55, leaving a husband and two children, a family bereft.
So, any joy in the 50th anniversary has been sapped. (She was so popular at Air Canada, her workplace, they bused in mourners from the airport to the funeral home.)
“Part of life,” he says, spreading his arms wide as though to capture the wide breadth of what it means to be alive. He looks heartbroken, still.
Kalil Dahdouh poses for a photo at Colonnade Pizza in Ottawa, Ontario Tuesday Sept 26, 2017. The Colonnade turns 50 this November.
His is a common immigrant story. The oldest of nine children, his impoverished father had to borrow money to send him to Canada, arriving after 17 days at sea from Italy.
With little English, he immediately went to work in the restaurant trade, sending money home monthly. After gaining his footing, he looked to start his own place, eventually buying out a partner at the Colonnade, carved from the ground floor of an office building. He worked nutty hours, seven days a week.
The restaurant, in a way, is a reflection of the man: on the fringe of downtown, humbly tucked away behind tinted windows off Gilmour Street, no gaudy sign, a roomy, carpeted interior that lends a quiet to the space, comfy chairs, mature service: in other words, it is civilized, with a whimsical tilt to Rome’s Colosseum.
“Every one thought I was crazy to open at this corner. Metcalfe and Gilmour?”
It will sound odd today, but pizza was relatively new to Ottawa in 1967, so they put the actual pie-making on the Metcalfe corner with big windows, so locals could see the flipping dough, steaming ovens, and witness the pizza miracle firsthand.
The Colonnade secret? The best dough, says Dahdouh, a secret-ingredient tomato sauce, and a custom-made cheese from a place called Oak Grove, in New Hamburg, Ont., that costs about $15 a kilo and covers some 350 pizzas every day.
(To this day, says Dahdouh, only two or three people at the downtown location — all family — know how to make the sauce and dough.)
He says they were so particular about the brick cheese that they flew up an agent from Oak Grove to perfect the variety to withstand 10 or 12 minutes in a 450-degree oven — the Colonnade has seven — without getting oily.
In 50 years, of course there are stories. Kim Campbell, for instance, lived on the fifth floor right next door. It was not rare for Dahdouh to deliver a hot pie to the apartment door of the future prime minister.
Pierre Trudeau, he says, came screaming down Gilmour the wrong way one day, with a little kid named Justin in the front seat of a ragtop Mercedes. Dahdouh went to scold him until he established who it was. A note of apology later arrived from the PMO, he says, and he’s still cursing himself for misplacing it.
There are now five other Colonnades in town but these are franchises, under the wing of son Peter, says Dahdouh, who still comes in every day, but only for a handful of hours (though all day Friday).
“If I can’t come downtown and spend time with customers, I feel lost.”
Of hobbies, he says he has none. In an era when restaurants change like the seasons, Dahdouh points to a winning formula, which has withstood half a century of city-building and changing tastes.
“The secret is right there. Serve the best product. People know it. You get lucky. Don’t change it. Don’t fool around with it. Be reasonable with your prices.”
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
查看原文...
Kalil Dahdouh is in the office above the Colonnade Pizza Restaurant, which he solely took over on Nov. 4, 1967, or very nearly 50 years ago, and a place that may make the best pizza in town — a household brand, really — consuming $30,000 a month in cheese alone.
At age 83 — in remarkably good shape — he’s reminiscing about arriving in Ottawa in January 1959, a young man from Lebanon, to be greeted with waist-high snowbanks outside Union Station.
“I called my father and told him I wanted to come home.” A city is grateful he stayed.
He went on to a remarkable business career, helping grow the city’s Lebanese community, providing a jumping-off point for the likes of Moe Atallah (Newport fame) and regularly feeding a posse of MPs, like Stephen Harper, then merely a nerdy member from Calgary.
“He loved this place,” says Dahdouh. “Half the time he never used a fork and knife. He’d read a book a night. Every night we’d look, different book. He would read and read and read.”
(He says he once heard a plea from a Conservative MP to put a word in with Harper: “You talk to him more than we do.”)
But it is not all fame and roses. He and his wife Mona had four children, including Peter — now a mainstay in the business — and Jacklene, who tragically died of brain cancer on Feb. 28 at the age of 55, leaving a husband and two children, a family bereft.
So, any joy in the 50th anniversary has been sapped. (She was so popular at Air Canada, her workplace, they bused in mourners from the airport to the funeral home.)
“Part of life,” he says, spreading his arms wide as though to capture the wide breadth of what it means to be alive. He looks heartbroken, still.
Kalil Dahdouh poses for a photo at Colonnade Pizza in Ottawa, Ontario Tuesday Sept 26, 2017. The Colonnade turns 50 this November.
His is a common immigrant story. The oldest of nine children, his impoverished father had to borrow money to send him to Canada, arriving after 17 days at sea from Italy.
With little English, he immediately went to work in the restaurant trade, sending money home monthly. After gaining his footing, he looked to start his own place, eventually buying out a partner at the Colonnade, carved from the ground floor of an office building. He worked nutty hours, seven days a week.
The restaurant, in a way, is a reflection of the man: on the fringe of downtown, humbly tucked away behind tinted windows off Gilmour Street, no gaudy sign, a roomy, carpeted interior that lends a quiet to the space, comfy chairs, mature service: in other words, it is civilized, with a whimsical tilt to Rome’s Colosseum.
“Every one thought I was crazy to open at this corner. Metcalfe and Gilmour?”
It will sound odd today, but pizza was relatively new to Ottawa in 1967, so they put the actual pie-making on the Metcalfe corner with big windows, so locals could see the flipping dough, steaming ovens, and witness the pizza miracle firsthand.
The Colonnade secret? The best dough, says Dahdouh, a secret-ingredient tomato sauce, and a custom-made cheese from a place called Oak Grove, in New Hamburg, Ont., that costs about $15 a kilo and covers some 350 pizzas every day.
(To this day, says Dahdouh, only two or three people at the downtown location — all family — know how to make the sauce and dough.)
He says they were so particular about the brick cheese that they flew up an agent from Oak Grove to perfect the variety to withstand 10 or 12 minutes in a 450-degree oven — the Colonnade has seven — without getting oily.
In 50 years, of course there are stories. Kim Campbell, for instance, lived on the fifth floor right next door. It was not rare for Dahdouh to deliver a hot pie to the apartment door of the future prime minister.
Pierre Trudeau, he says, came screaming down Gilmour the wrong way one day, with a little kid named Justin in the front seat of a ragtop Mercedes. Dahdouh went to scold him until he established who it was. A note of apology later arrived from the PMO, he says, and he’s still cursing himself for misplacing it.
There are now five other Colonnades in town but these are franchises, under the wing of son Peter, says Dahdouh, who still comes in every day, but only for a handful of hours (though all day Friday).
“If I can’t come downtown and spend time with customers, I feel lost.”
Of hobbies, he says he has none. In an era when restaurants change like the seasons, Dahdouh points to a winning formula, which has withstood half a century of city-building and changing tastes.
“The secret is right there. Serve the best product. People know it. You get lucky. Don’t change it. Don’t fool around with it. Be reasonable with your prices.”
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
查看原文...
